Vampires, Postmodernity, and Postfeminism:Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Abstract

In this article, I explore the popular series Buffy the Vampire Slayer through the intersections of post-feminism, postmodernity, and the vampire metanarrative. In particular, I discuss the manner in which this television narrative appropriates body rhetorics and narrative agency from traditionally masculinist metanarratives in the horror and mystery genres. Moreover, I examine how the fictional characters negotiate the politics of feminism and postmodernity in contemporary American suburban life. Social and mystical powers (on the side of good) are matrilineal in the series: only females can be vampire slayers, only females can have supernatural powers, and only females can discern who the predators are. (The sole exception is the “Watcher,” Giles, a decidedly femininized male.) Through the narrative frame of the series, each episode is grounded in the tension between the embodied female heroine and the varied embodiments of evil she and her friends encounter.

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